While speaking to Jim O’Brien about ‘Hot Lead’ (of which more next week) he mentioned that John Raynes had died. I was quite shocked that it will be twelve months on Thursday the 11th and that I had missed it. I sent a very belated condolences message to his daughter Gaby and family who wrote on John’s page;
“John was an internationally exhibited and well renowned artist. Born in Australia he studied at the Royal College of Art 1951-57 and, over the next 35 years pursued a successful national and international illustration practice. John returned to painting full time in the 1990s, exhibiting in London, Brighton, Edinburgh, Portugal, Uzes, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. John was represented for portraiture at the prestigious Mall Galleries in London and elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in 2003, winning the St. Cuthberts Paper Mill Prize. John was one of only 12 portrait artists commissioned to work with celebrity participants in “Star Portraits” for BBC1″
Jules Burt and I visited him at his home in Falmouth on the 16th September 2012 and were made very welcome by John and Sheila and HERE is the page I put together afterwards. Sheila has got back to me to say;
“Thank you so much for your condolences, I did at first think of putting a notice in the Times but we then decided that we didn’t know anyone who read it so Gaby decided Facebook would be better, not sure I agreed but nothing reaches everyone. John was pretty ill for some time but we didn’t expect things to happen so quickly. It will be a year on Thursday since he died, just short of his 90th birthday. It was good to see all the book covers together. I haven’t done a lot towards sorting out the studio and work yet, such a daunting proposition!”
I see that Anne Frank has become a ‘vlogger’ on ‘YouTube’ where her diary has been serialised into 15 parts by ‘The Ann Frank House Organisation’
‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ (later ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’) was one of PAN’s million copy sellers and so got a ‘Golden PAN Award’ although I’m not sure when they stopped publishing it and Penguin took over.
Having recently spoken to Christine Insteed of ‘Artist Partners’ I reread their 60th Celebration Brochure and had forgotten how many PAN related artists they have or had on the books. It has been a pleasure to have make contact with several of them or of family members over the last 20 or so years.